Harding Harding's Presidency was plagued with scandals from his Ohio Gang of friends political advisors and cabinet members. The most famous of these was the Teapot Dome in the early 1920s over the private leasing of government owned oil reserves at Elk Hills California and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. In 1922 Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall secretly leased the two oil reserves to private oil companies. In 1923 a Senate committee began an investigation into the leases and later the Congress of the United States filed a successful lawsuit to cancel them. Fall served a year in prison and paid a $100,000 fine following his 1929 conviction for accepting a bribe. "I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!"Oil scandal.
Harding's Presidency was plagued with scandals from his Ohio Gang of friends political advisors and cabinet members. The most famous of these was the Teapot Dome in the early 1920s over the private leasing of government owned oil reserves at Elk Hills California and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. In 1922 Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall secretly leased the two oil reserves to private oil companies. In 1923 a Senate committee began an investigation into the leases and later the Congress of the United States filed a successful lawsuit to cancel them. Fall served a year in prison and paid a $100,000 fine following his 1929 conviction for accepting a bribe.